[jiggy2011]

This is one thing that has always made me skeptical about FBs survival.

The majority of it's use seems to be for very short term things, like friends sharing what they are currently doing.

There is little value in most FB posts that are years old. As opposed to wikipedia which is a gradually building blob of knowledge.

Let's say FB was down for a week, many people would use G+ instead for their social networking needs and how many would come back?

[NegativeK]

For an individual, Facebook's value is in the connections that people have formed on the site. If Facebook was down for a week, there'd be people searching confusedly for the next social platform That Everyone Uses.

Would Plus receive more traffic? Well, yeah. But so would Twitter and other social networks. My mom, for one, would return to sending email jokes instead of resharing Facebook stuff. She doesn't know what Google Plus is. I imagine a large number of other individuals are in the same boat.

Would people return to Facebook after a week? Assuming the connections between users aren't broken, I imagine so. It'd take more than a week to reconnect to that coworker from seven years ago, but who I still enjoy talking politics with about once a month.

So, in other words: Facebook's biggest asset is that it has a crapton of momentum. Keeps its one billion users on the site more and more is going to keep that momentum up. Switching from Facebook to the new thing would be more of a collective hassle than the demise of MySpace. That doesn't mean it won't happen, though.

[hellosmithy]

Metcalfe's law. This is really pretty valuable though. Not many people are likely to hang around on an empty social network no matter how great the UI. Personally I'm pretty fed up with Facebook, but living abroad it is still quite simply the easiest way for me to stay in touch with a lot of my friends.

[timpeterson]

"There is little value in most FB posts that are years old. As opposed to wikipedia which is a gradually building blob of knowledge."

actually never thought of it so simply like this, thanks for that,

[RandallBrown]

The thousands of pictures of my life all through college and the years since have immense value to me.

[lmm]

People like collecting such things (and I'm no exception), but how often do you go back and actually look at them?

[RandallBrown]

A couple times a month maybe? I know when the timeline feature first debuted I spent a lot of time looking way back in time.